Movement is Standing Still, Standing Still is Retreating.

Machiavelli observed that states begin to die when they cease to grow. Over at Ace of Spaces, Monty applies this rule generally, as evolutionary biology does:

Every organism must evolve to keep pace with other organisms in their ecosystem to maintain their evolutionary fitness. In other words, you have to run very fast just to maintain you evolutionary position. Losing your evolutionary "fitness" means losing out to (or becoming lunch for) fitter organisms.

This is known as the Red Queen in ev-bio, the Thing that is to be Feared, the Thing that Keeps You Running. Our problem now is that we fend off the Red Queen not with our own efforts, but with the future labor:

In an honest society, debt is sometimes a prudent thing: debt allows for investment that builds even greater wealth. This kind of debt is an investment that society makes in the producers. (This is a contest of skill more than chance; so gambling is the wrong term.) Sometimes the investment fails, but more often it pays off splendidly. The system ends up with far more energy than it began with, and that's the name of the game. The Red Queen is defeated (if only for awhile).
But the debt our government is accruing is not that kind of debt. This is a drunkards' debt, the debt incurred by a spendthrift and wastrel.

Read the whole thing.

The Stuff We Use.

Earth Day inevitably inspires a re-assessment of our economic life; this remains the only thing about Earth Day that I respect. A few months ago, I was musing about phosphorous, food, and the remains of this cycle, suggesting that we might have to re-use what our bodies produce. And in the wake of Earth Day, Reason Magazine suggests that not just phosphorous, but a host of substances might become too costly due to current use:

“Is it realistic to predict that knowledge accumulation is so powerful as to outweigh the physical limits of physical capital services and the limited substitution possibilities for natural resources?” In other words, can increasing scientific knowledge and technological innovation overcome any limitations to economic growth posed by the depletion of non-renewable resources?
The debate over peak oil is heavily politicized, so let's set it aside and test the idea of imminent resource peaks and their consequences for economic growth on three other non-renewable resources: lithium, neodymium, and phosphorus.

 The solutions are:

• Reduce the use of Neodymium by putting AC-Induction motors in our Priuses instead.
• Re-use materials to make zinc-air or metal-air batteries instead of lithium.
• Recycle the phosphorous in our waste with NoMix toilets and improve the efficiency of fertilizer.

The key element to remember is the one truly re-usable resource: the human mind.

The Essayist # 18: Islamic Idol

I have never understood the Muslim sensitivity with regard to Mohammed. Islam finds the notion of the Incarnation ridiculous ("Far be it from His glory to have a son," saith the Quran), yet for all intents and purposes treats its human prophet as though he were divine, hence unfit for graven image. The logic behind proscriptions against idolatry dwells in confusing an image of God for His reality; a sculpture of a calf, however golden, cannot be the King of the Universe. Muslims have long accused Christianity of dancing with polytheism in regards to the Trinity, of divinizing Jesus of Nazareth; how they fail to see the degree to which they do the same escapes me.

E.J. Dionne Merits Another Fisking...

...insert your own joke here.

Things That are Not a Right.

The commonplace from the left with regard to health care is that it is, or should be, a "right" (usually with the accompanying boilerplate "In a country as rich as ours..."). The more sophisticated, such as President Obama, talk in terms of a designation between "negative" rights (free speech, religion, assembly, et al.) and "positive" rights (everything Franklin Roosevelt meant when he discussed "freedom from want"). To embrace the latter is understood as the evolved understanding.

Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrisey encounters a group of super-articulate teens claiming just that. He explains why so-called "positive rights" aren't rights. (Hat tip: Insty)

As human beings, we want to see people succeed to the point where they can feed, clothe, and care for themselves independently, as that establishes true personal freedom.  However, none of us have the right to confiscate the services of a doctor or nurse without their consent, and without their ability to set a price for their time and expertise.  We don’t have the right to walk into a grocery story to demand apples when we’re hungry, either, although we should have access to the market without bias when we can properly compensate its owner for the goods.

I can speak freely on my own, without anyone opening my mouth or putting words in it. All my right to free speech requires is that someone else not silence me. The same is true for any other so-called "negative" rights. Health care, on the other hand, requires someone else's labor to provide. To claim it as a "right" is thus to claim the labor of another. It is a difference in degree from the medieval corvee, under which a lord could take the labor of the peasants on his land without compensating them.

During the Carolingian period, the kings of France began to grant income from royal estates to lords they desired to keep well-disposed toward the crown. Unlike feudal grants of land, which were passed down from generations, and upon which the lord took up residence and possession, these gifts, or benefices, were usually in monetary form only, keeping the actual land and economic activity performed thereupon under royal control. They could be revoked at royal whim, and so encouraged obedience to royal wishes.

Freedom of speech is a right. Free Health care is a benefice. And it's only a matter of time before that benefice is denied to those deemed politically unworthy.

Confess your Whiteness!

Protein Wisdom links the usual insanity, white people are racists by virtue of being white, and any denial of this is taken as evidence of your racism. The obvious parallel is to the Inquisition, where denial of heresy was often taken as sufficient grounds to convict of heresy. A point I've made before (and been banned from web sites for saying). But commenter dicentra links a different point:

As a Canadian of Japanese ancestry, I have spent my entire adult life trying to allay the burden white people carry about their whiteness or my lack thereof. “No. I would prefer if you didn’t promote me to comply with your stupid, misguided and racist employment equity program.” Or of late: “No. I don’t find Sumo suits racist, but I find your pandering to my sensitivities very offensive.”
I have had people apologize to me for mentioning “sushi” or “Ninja” in everyday conversation. You don’t get more ridiculous than that.
So, you know what? I give up. Go ahead and knock yourselves out with guilt all you white people. In order to correct historic wrongs, all white people must hand over everything they own to me, the self-proclaimed representative of all non-white people. I will then redistribute as I see fit to all my fellow repressed non-white people. Now, maybe all you white PC, guilt-mongers will shut up and quit feeling remorse over your imagined superiority.

It's almost as though certain lefties, unable to deal with the notion that whites are not the redeemers of the world, have decided that they are the villains of the world, the "greatest murder, greatest kidnapper," in the phrase of Malcolm X. It occurs to me that this is just as racist as believing that God had ordained us to rule the world.

Earth to Honkies: WHITE PEOPLE ARE NOT SPECIAL.

Libertarians and Teh Racism

David Boaz of Cato wrote an article for Reason.com that started some pretty fierce discussions on liberties and oppressions past. A key excerpt:

Unclear on the Concept

My Pet Jawa does the best thing that can be done with aggrieved lefties. He points and laughs. (Hat tip: Ace).